A look at what's going on in Trinidad, on H Street, and in the larger area north of Capitol Hill.

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Two Dogs Found Wandering H Street Last Night

A reader sent in photos of two dogs she found wandering the 900 block of H Street last night around 9:50pm. Neither dog had a collar, and she planned to get them checked for micro chips this morning. Email halbarano[at]gmail.com if you think you recognize either dog.

6 comments:

I have seen these dogs running down on the sidewalk the 1300 block! I think their owner lets them out and they get home on their own. I'd suggest taking them back to where they were found and see if they can't find their way home. It doesn't seem like they have the type of owner who would put much energy in to finding them.

Of course if they owner IS searching for them, s/he isn't likely to go on google and search for "Lost dog DC frozen tropics" the person would call 311. NEVER keep a lost dog at your house! If you really want to help reunite a dog and its human, call 311.

If my dog is lost, but safe in your house, but 311 knows nothing about her whereabouts- she could be dead for all I know. By keeping her, you're aren't really helping- you basically stealing.

I hope that didn't sound harsh, but the city shelter is VERY god about reuniting lost dogs and their owners. A couple of years ago I found a lost dog, called 311, and the owners had already called in to report the dog missing! They were reunited in about an hour. If I had kept the dog overnight, the poor owners would have freaking out all night.

Thanks Tom, we called animal control and the shelter last night, and provided them details, they would not come and get the dogs, instructed that we could keep the dogs and try to reunite them on our own. After they would not even take our number down we took this course of action. This is NOT somewhere I would ever want someone to take my dogs to and cannot express my disappointment in the level of service, concern and action from this local service. If my husband or I had any confidence in this service, we would have taken the dogs there last night.

We intervened last night after the dogs ran into the road and almost caused an accident, for their safety and the safety of others we had them stay in our fenced yard. As a pet owner, I acted as I would have wanted someone else to take care of one of my babies if this happened to one of them. If I had woken up this morning and saw one of them on the road because they had been run over, I would never forgiven myself for not taking some type of action. So as anytime a person is faced with a decision we make it based on the current circumstances and use the best judgement we can in the situation we are faced with.

Starting last night we posted flyers, contacted local blogs, craigslist, went to Atlas to check for micro chips, metro mutts and canvased the neighborhood asking people if they recognized the pups. After spending the most of Friday night and the better half of our Saturday actively working to reunite the dogs with their owner, we successfully reunited them with their owner.

I appreciate your comment on calling the city which is valid, which is why this was our first action taken last night. Going forward, however, I suggest that you ask the question if any of this has been done, prior to judging based on your own personal assumptions on what someone did or didn't do, or accusing them of things such as stealing, as this is clearly what we were trying to do.

Heather, you definitely did the right thing. You should be commended, which is what I hope this message achieves. God bless you and your husband for your generosity and tireless efforts to reunite those pets with their human.

Heather, I'm surprised animal control had such a bad response to your call. I had a great experience with them, but that was in the Fenty years, when constituent services were EXTREMELY important to the administration.

In 2009 I also found a sickly kitten one time, and animal control came to get it that same evening. I think it was born in a backyard somewhere, so I assumed it wasn't lost.

I hope the owners of the dogs have seen the error of their ways. Did they also have another dog? When I saw them running down H Street a few weeks ago, I think there were three of them.